Managed Print Services (MPS) at its very core can clear up your staff’s time to focus on your business’ core tasks. MPS takes on a wide range of duties, from keeping track of printer maintenance and printer supplies inventory to providing IT help desk support when printers fail to operate as expected. When companies partner with an MPS, they gain great productivity from employees and more reliability from their shared multifunction printers (MFPs), desktop printers, copiers, and scanners.
But, MPS can also provide greater security for your business and your employees. When IT systems are infiltrated, the result is either a halt in operations, loss of sensitive information, and/or damage to the company’s reputation.
How MPS Can Secure Data
Unsecured printers can give cyber-criminals access to your company’s IT network and sensitive data by exposure in the following ways:
- Print jobs intercepted on LAN or WAN networks
- Documents emailed outside network via MFPs
- Hacked printers that give access to outsiders
- Confidential information printed on shared MFPs
MPS provides access to experts that know the current technology environment and can get in front of outside threats before they occur. Businesses must look at both in-house printer security and web-based threats that can be either complex or involve simple procedures that every employee must follow. The latter includes having a secure hard drive for printers and requiring pin codes, passwords, or a printer security card to control user access to business printers.
Printer Security Integration
Your company will most likely already have an IT security strategy in place to protect your intellectual property, business contracts, and business and employee financial information. MPS integrates the security of your printers within the overall context of your IT network security. Adding printer security to your IT cybersecurity framework is an important task that has often been neglected in the past. This is why printers are leaving business networks open to cybercriminals.
Your printers may be allowing outside access to your critical data and documents. For this reason, document management should be addressed to limit remote digital access as another step towards enterprise-wide security. And if your company must be aligned with certain industry regulations such as patient data protection, then securing your print services is even more critical.
If you would like to implement managed print services for your business, contact On Demand today.